“Well, of course sewin’ ’aint just a man’s business, anyway; and when he has just got to do it––”
“Why don’t you let Mary McGuire do it for you? You pay her enough, certainly, to keep you from becomin’ a buttonless orphan.”
Mary McGuire, be it said, was the woman who came in by the day, and cooked for Jonathan, and intermittently cleaned him out of house and home.
“She don’t know much about such things,” replied Jonathan confidentially. “I did let her do it for a while; but when my buttonholes got tore larger, instead of sewin’ ’em up, she just put on a larger button; and I’d be buttonin’ my pants with the covers of saucepans by now, if I’d let her go on.”
“It is curious what helpless critters men are, specially widowers. Now Jonathan, why don’t you lay aside your sewin’, and invite me into your parlor? You aren’t a bit polite.”
“Well, come along then, Hepsey; but the parlor aint just in apple-pie order, as you might say. Things are mussed up a bit.” He looked at her suspiciously.
When they entered the parlor Mrs. Burke gazed about in a critical sort of way.
“Jonathan Jackson, if you don’t get married again before long I don’t know what’ll become of you,” she remarked, as she wrote her name with the end of her 64 finger in the dust on the center-table. “Why don’t you open the parlor occasionally and let the air in? It smells that musty in here I feel as if I was attendin’ your wife’s funeral all over again.”
“Well, of course you know we never did use the parlor much, ’cept there was a funeral in the family, or you called, or things like that.”